When Harriet Iacoletti (nee Kinder) died at age 100 in 2002, a piece of Bristol history went with her. A lifelong resident and one-half of a musical couple that ran the Babbitt House Antiques shop on Hope Street since 1958, she and her husband Emanuel made a notable contribution to this historic town for the last century.

But Mrs. Iacoletti left one more legacy upon her death, this time to benefit all Rhode Island: a $450,000 outright bequest to The Rhode Island Foundation.

“People like the Iacolettis are the very heart of a community foundation like ours,” points out Foundation President Ronald V. Gallo. “They serve their cities and towns and neighborhoods all their lives, and even then leave behind something for future generations.” Gallo says the Iacolettis’ gift will establish a permanent endowment -- the Emanuel and Harriet K. Iacoletti Fund -- that will join several other Foundation endowments created by Bristolians.

A couple who found each other through music
“They were artists first,” recalls Ralph Kinder of his late great-aunt and great-uncle, the latter who died in 1998 at age 91. “They really appreciated everything cultured and artistic.

“Hattie grew up in a musical family, at least for the girls. Her parents were musicians and had met through music. Her older sister was a professional pianist in orchestras throughout the northeast resort circuit,” Mr. Kinder explains.

Born in Bristol, Harriet Kinder graduated from Colt Memorial High School before enrolling in the Berklee College of Music in Boston. To help pay her expenses, she worked evenings in an orchestra, where she played cello.

But her musical aspirations fell apart when she was fired by an orchestra, she explained in a letter home to her mother, at the behest of the club owner who did not want a woman in its orchestra.

”She was despondent, and eventually returned to Bristol to live with her parents,” Mr. Kinder says. Her father, Samuel, owned and operated a landscaping and florist business, Samuel Kinder & Brothers, which remains a family operation today.

Harriet met her husband-to-be in the late 1920s or early 1930s. “The story goes that she was walking by an open window and heard someone playing a piano. She said no one in Bristol plays a piano like that and that she had to meet that person,” relates her great-nephew.

The pianist was Emanuel Iacoletti, who was born in Montclair, NJ, and had attended both the Rhode Island School of Design and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. As a private music instructor he “started a little business, calling it something like the Bristol Cultural Center.

“Hattie and Emanuel fell in love and eventually eloped to New Hampshire,” continues Mr. Kinder. “They kept the marriage from their families for about two years while they both lived at home, knowing their families wouldn’t approve of the marriage;” the couple didn’t believe that her English ancestry and his Italian ancestry would have been accepted by either family. Emanuel’s parents also wanted him to be in New York City to try his hand as a professional pianist.

“But they were both extremely strong-willed, eventually told their families, and bought a house together across the street from the Kinder family homestead in Bristol,” Mr. Kinder says.

Emanuel Iacoletti continued to give private music lessons for 65 years until retiring in 1990. In the late 1930s, his Saturday afternoon piano concerts, sponsored by the former Outlet Co., were broadcast by WJAR Radio. The Iacolettis enjoyed playing music together, he on piano and she on the cello, and attending antiques auctions, according to her Providence Journal obituary.

The couple opened Babbitt House Antiques in Bristol in 1958, operating the business out of a front room of their Hope Street home until 1991 when Mr. Iacoletti became ill, then died seven years later. Mrs. Iacoletti re-opened the business three years later, at age 99, and operated it until her own death in April 2002 at 100.

The couple had no children but are survived by five nephews, including Rhode Island residents Joseph G. Kinder of Bristol, Samuel C. Kinder of Portsmouth, and Robert S.L. Kinder of Jamestown; and two nieces, including Harriet L. Kinder of Bristol; as well as Ralph Kinder and nine other great-nieces and great-nephews.

“They were really true, sort of bohemian, artists that you rarely see in a small town. They adored each other and were a wonderful pair. Hattie was the sweetest person in the world and Emanuel was the quiet artist. They lived their own life of intellect,” Mr. Kinder concludes.